Chris Goodwin

Makes more sense now, I just forgot how the mechanics come together while reading and stopping for breaks.
 

As all things do in professional wrestling and other entertainment fiction, the popularity of the programming— and in particular, the popularity of the actors— have their ups and downs.  After six years in the NWL, Benita’s popularity had dipped as the novelty wore off.  To regenerate interest in her character, she was offered a Heel Turn, and declined it.  She decided she would rather leave a good guy, particularly now that, thanks to the cartoon, thousands of children at least thought they knew who she was, than to continue on as a villain.  (It may well be this decision that saved the The Amazing Amazon cartoon from losing popularity, allowing it to spin off into a new toy line— one from which Benita received generous royalties— and three separate comic book series.  Out of print now, all three ran for several years, and the royalties helped Benita to spend more time with her now-pregnant daughter.
    
        Benita’s life changed again the day she walked out, for the last time, of the NWL Studio Arena.  Still in costume— she had asked to keep it, and realistically, it wouldn’t fit anyone else who would actually want to wear it, she walked out of the studio and onto the busy downtown streets.  She paused a moment, taking a minute to enjoy, as always, the shady miniature park in the square across the street.  Downtown Campaign was filled with them: places where the early developers had foregone  traditional intersections in favor of large, wide, squarish traffic circles, in which the original trees were left to grow in landscaped glory amongst benches and fountains.  It was almost jarring to walk out of a multi-million dollar arena and television studio onto the busy sidewalk, and jarring again to see what amounted to a diorama of the early days of the city.  Almost at once, she became aware of the sirens, and could tell they were close.  
       She looked around, trying to find the source and the cause of them, and just as she stepped onto the road (downtown traffic wasn’t ever too heavy around the park squares, simply because there were so many newer, straighter roads to handle the volume of traffic the city had grown to include) to get a better view, a dark blue car roared around a corner- an older car, a muscle car of some sort, with a large white chevron painted boldly down it’s side, with a man leaning out of the passenger side window, aiming a pistol behind them.  The sight shocked her so badly that she did not realize until it was too late that it was bearing directly at her, and the driver's focus was screwed tightly onto the rearview mirror.
       The tires had howled as the car slid much-too-fast around the corner, and the driver had corrected with an unthinking, automatic reflex that suggested both great skill and familiarity with the vehicle.  The small handful of people on the sidewalk leapt to the sides, hugging buildings or skittering to the other sides of the large concrete pedestals that supported the street lights.  Everyone was aghast, confused— then she heard the scream, and snapped her attention back to where it belonged.  It was too late to run.  Instinctively, she protected herself, leaning hard to her left, grabbing the front bumper of the car and shoving it hard to her right even as it barreled at her.  She completed her roll to the left, and the tires of the car howled again as it heaved over hard to her right.  The driver, confused by the sudden input, looked back toward the windshield in time to see the massive old basswood tree directly in his path.  He stood instantly on the brakes, but it was far too late…
       The police arrived seconds later, pulling up to a scene of a crashed getaway car and thirty or so people clapping, cheering, and carrying the lady wrestler from TV wrestling.  By the time they had called the situation in, television crews were on their way, and they interviewed several excited citizens who had witnessed the event.  No one knew who Benita Dyanara Catreras was, but _everyone_ knew The Amazon.
       The event caused a brief resurgence of interest in The Amazon— old wrestling matches became available on pay-per-view, her cartoon surged in popularity again, and four different comic book companies negotiated for the right to do a book around her.  Eventually, she agreed to a twenty-four-issue pre-scripted start-to-finish series; she wanted no cliffhangers from a cancelled series, feeling that children were “cheated” when that happened.  The new series published within a month.  It wasn’t very good, having been thrown together to hastily cash in on a flashy human interest piece, and was called “The Amazon: Tales of the Savage Land.”  It featured the title character prowling the night streets of New York, fighting crime.  It wasn’t very good, but it made her giggle.  
       The event also caused a lot of panic and chastising from Mariposa, which made Benita smile with a genuine, complete warmth that she had not felt since Mariposa was a toddler, and things with Oscar were still—-  Well, best to put that out of her mind.  The royalties were steady, but she would need a job soon, and needed to start looking.  Even at that, the new comic book had put a thought into her mind— a potentially dangerous thought, and certainly one Mari would not approve of.  What did that matter?  Benita was approaching fifty (though, perhaps due to a quirk of her power, didn’t look a day over thirty) and, given her powers and her experiences, was far more capable of looking out for herself that Mari would even understand— far more than anyone she ever knew, really.  Her mind made up, Benita cleaned the Amazon costume, and wondered who could make something that looked the same, but perhaps offered some kind of protection?  She was about to test the waters of masked crime fighting.  Though she probably wouldn’t use the mask.  She was six-four and more muscular than any of the men she used to wrestle.  Surely it would take more than a mask to hide who she was.
       Over the next four years, Benita did her best to wage a war on crime, but truth be told, she wasn’t very good at it.  Unlike the comics and cartoons and movies and television dramas, crime did not simply walk up to her and dare her to stop it.  Certainly she stumbled across the occasional robbery or mugging or carjacking, and had no problems at all stopping and capturing the perpetrators, but in the end, she had no real chops for investigation or detective work, and her outgoing personality kept her tangled with every person who would speak to her.  Still, she felt that there was more to being a hero than just beating up onerous people.  There was no end to the number of cats she retrieved from storm gutters and trees, or tires she changed for motorists without tools (through the simple expedient of lifting the car up with one hand and screwing the lug nuts on and off with the other) and other “civic heroics.”  The Amazon was well-loved by the city, and she loved the people right back.
       In her fourth year as a superhero, Benita was recruited by the Chessmen, an elite group of costumed government agents who handled high and low-profile cases that required an “outsider” group that could be disavowed as necessary.  She was to be the new White Rook, as the previous one had been promoted to Black team following the loss of the previous Black Rook.  Benita was in love with the jet-setting lifestyle and the travel and missions— both covert and overt, and learned a considerable amount about detective work, investigation, forensics, and other skills useful to actual crime fighters.  Best of all, she got to use her powers, regularly, and often in real battle.  She was enamored with this new life, and her powers grew, little by little.  She developed lasting, caring relationships with her teammates, but eventually grew disenchanted; she had become deeply unhappy with the way politics worked into the decision to take or decline certain missions, and she had begun to miss her neighborhood, her little house, and her family.  Her granddaughter was nearly nine, and filled her thoughts more and more.  Benita left the Chessmen on good terms amid a tearful goodbye.
    Back in Campaign City, she worked hard on her family bonds and repairing the damage that costumed adventuring had done to the relationship with her daughter, while her granddaughter seemed quite delighted that her _Tita_ could pick her up and leap to the roof and show her the sun setting on the whole world.  Benita loved her girls, but her granddaughter Clarita…  Clarita became her whole world.  She promised herself that she would be, for ‘Rita, the mother that Oscar had not let her be for Mari.
       Benita couldn’t help herself; she loved being strong, and she loved helping people, and delighted in the amazing ways they would repay her kindness, to her and to others.  She had a slightly larger costume made, and again took to the streets (though less frequently than before) to deter crime.  This time, she adopted the name Pilar.  Unfortunately, her by-now decidedly androgynous build, unusual height, and incredible musculature made the name confusing.  It didn’t help that only spanish-speaking individuals recognized the pun as both a girl’s name and one of several words alluding to great strength.  Non-spanish speakers heard it as “pillar” with an accent.  As much fun as she was having being a street hero again, constantly correcting people was becoming a bit tedious.  
       During her time as Pilar she was approached by the Seven.  While most of the world assumed that Martin Power was the strongman for the group, few were aware of what an on-again, off-again relationship he actually had with them, and that for the most part, the Seven were trading more on the _belief_ of his presence than his actual presence.  Complicating matters further, he had left one day with a ranking officer from the Frontier Corps and a costumed agent who dressed in tattered robes and a hood.  That was a year ago, and no one had seen him since.  The Seven had, they said, “been watching The Amazon,” even during her time with the Chessmen, and were impressed with her improvement.  They wanted her to consider being their permanent “strong man.”  Bursting with excitement, she accepted without hesitation.
 

For anything that is a Carried weapon, I'd let them switch it out with any other Carried weapon of the same or smaller mass.  For weapons with different ammunition types, I'd probably have the stats worked out beforehand so it's as easy as writing down which ammo they're loading.  Optionally I'd let non-Carried weapons be switched out before a mission, which would take time and possibly a Mechanics roll.  
 
Another option is to spend Construction Points for more Mass Units than the robot can typically carry with its Chassis & Power Plant capacity; the capacity limits how much the robot can carry at any particular time, but the extras are for items the character keeps "back at base" and can swap those in and out as desired.  A resource pool, more or less.
 
Edit to add:  In one of the games I played in back in the day, the GM created his own, fairly extensive, premade weapons list, and we drew from that for several campaigns.  That can prove pretty helpful, plus there is at least one list of pre-created weapons in the book specifically for this purpose.

The clinic, based on what Mariposa had told them, had indeed called for a specialist, who, after his initial assessment, directed Benita directly to Daniels Institute of Biological Science for additional testing and confirmation.  The bigger relief to Benita, though, was that there really was no charge.  More importantly, she had gotten Mariposa to agree to stop for a meal; Benita had never been more ravenous in her life.  The testing revealed what Mari had thought: Benita was very much a superhuman. Something in the scene the night before had triggered her powers to express; in an instant, she had become incredibly strong, and in the span of a minute or two had grown two inches (on top of her already-impressive six-foot stature) and her musculature had shredded and rebuild itself: she weighed a full sixty pounds more than she had the previous morning.  It was no wonder that she was exhausted and ravenous.  
    The specialists at Daniels— who had dealt with many types of superpowered individuals over their history— were at a loss to explain why this had happened so suddenly, or just what had triggered it.  They speculated that something within Benita herself had been suppressing the development of her powers on a more natural timeline, but could not explain what that might have been.  Benita suspected that she knew just what it was— or more specifically, _who_ it was, and why, but said nothing to anyone.  She vowed to herself that the dark part of her life, no matter how little remained to her at this age, was over.  The biologists all agreed that whatever it was that triggered her to release her power had been powerful enough to undo instantly whatever deep psychological or physiological blocks that had been within her, and her powers rebounded as if they had been pressurized, nearly killing her in the process: even as big as she was, she showed classic signs of advanced malnutrition and electrolyte imbalance, as if her body had somehow _eaten_ every part of her that was not already sinew and bone.  She was put on an electrolyte drip for nearly two days and fed a steady (if bland) high calorie protein diet until she was discharged with the orders “eat, drink, and rest.  You will know when you feel right.”
 
The next few weeks were a whirlwind for Benita: she couldn’t satiate her hunger and her muscles positively _ached_.  The doctors at Daniels were at a loss as to why her initial transformation hadn’t been cripplingly painful, but rationalized that it was likely the distraction of whatever stressor had triggered her to drop the psychological block in the first place.  The ache she felt, though— it wasn’t from overwork or muscle fatigue or the cramps of electrolyte deficiency.  Her body _burned_ for exercise.  Against the advice of the specialists and the protestations of Mariposa, she went to the gym.
    Benita stayed in the gym for several days, stopping her workout and leaving only to eat and fetch fresh clothes, though that did entail a shopping trip with Mari, as almost none of her clothes could be stretched over her now.  After three weeks of intense working out, nearly non-stop, she finally felt relief.  Feeling genuinely, comfortably tired and still flush from the exercise, Benita finally went home.
 
    It wasn’t too long before she became a small-time celebrity.  Unable to continue competitive bodybuilding (she felt that having developed the ability to lift nearly ten tons of weight gave her an unfair advantage), she decided that, as part of changing her life, she would become a professional wrestler.  Certainly her power would allow her to dominate if she wished, but if she stayed to the script, there shouldn’t be any problems, and no actual reason that anyone would have to know about her ability.  
    Benita wrestled under the name “The Amazon,” and was given the backstory of having left a jungle tribe of warrior women to become an eco-warrior against the illegal mining and lumber industries, and that she had come to America to become a wrestler in order to raise money for her cause and to raise awareness of the problems of the Amazon rain forests.  “Whatever,” she thought.  “I just want to have fun and work out a bit.”  The timing of the backstory, the costume (the same green dress-like costume she would eventually use for her fledgling career as a crime fighter), her incredible size and physique, and the fact that, owing to her stature, she would only wrestle men, made her insanely popular on the circuit, and it wasn’t too long before she was picked up by the National Wrestling League, who recognized that her popularity and her warm, subtle beauty made her extremely marketable.
    The NWL signed Benita and kept her as The Amazon, and made sure that she only fought men, and Benita stuck to the scripts, winning and losing as she was supposed to.  Meanwhile an entire toy line and a children’s cartoon series were launched.  The cartoon wasn’t great fare, but it was colorful and exciting, featuring “actual stories of The Amazon and her struggle to save the rainforest from evil developers.”  Benita didn’t mind, though: the message was solid and just peeked out from under the action, and she still receives royalties from the reruns to this day.  Besides, it was way better in story, message, and overall scripting than the Ned Taylor Network’s infamous “Planetman and the Junior Geologists.”   What kind of a power is “heart,” anyway?
    It would be a few more years, still, but eventually, Benita would come to learn that it was _her_ power.

Benita felt even more light headed than before, and was beginning to get nauseous by the time Oscar had left, throwing the divorce papers down on the concrete steps as he left the little house, cursing Benita at the top of his lungs all the way to his car.  “Mama!” cooed Mariposa, “Please, Mama!  Lie down.  Rest.  You look…   your color, Mama; you are so pale…”
       “I am fine, Mari,” Benita spoke with that soft, tired ‘don’t worry about me; it’s nothing’ tone that a parent never truly gets away from when their children fret.  “I have had a very exciting day for an old woman; that’s all.’  She was feeling dizzy, though, and she felt…. Hot.  She could feel her body trying to cope with what felt like a heat overload, and she could feel heat radiating from herself.  She took the excuse of humoring her daughter to drop unceremoniously on the couch.
       “Mama!  You would have scolded me for ten minutes for doing that!  Do you hear how the couch complains?!”
       Benita giggled.  She was right, of course.  The furniture took time to pay off; it wasn’t impossible to treat it properly.
       “Mama!  Look!  Look at yourself!  You are shaking!”
       Benita looked at her hands.  They were trembling, slightly.  How foggy was her vision, now?  Her hands did not belong to her.  These were large, powerful hands.  Certainly she had gained considerable muscle over the years, but the gains had stopped as she started getting closer to forty.  Still, these hands— had she really become so strong?  So big?  She stared at them as they twisted and turned against the spinning room.  Then she noticed the tear in her dress.  The _tears_ in her dress!  perhaps, because she had moved so quickly, and with such adrenaline, she had flexed far harder than intended?  The sleeves of her autumn dress were split, and her muscled arms were visible.  The shoulder stitching had torn loose as well; one shoulder had separated completely as her powerful trapezius bulged through it.  She was not flexing now.  She was barely conscious now.  So…. why were her shoulders still bulging through her dress…?
       She got up and walked carefully to the full-length mirror next to the hallway, light-headed and unsteady.  When she was finally able to comprehend what she saw, her eyes opened until they strained her face, and she didn’t blink again until her eyes were so dry they felt they might crack and peel.  She was an extremely muscular woman; twenty years of bodybuilding will do that.  She had gotten used to having to have her clothes altered, and given her budget, had gotten in the habit of modifying patterns and making her own clothes, which fit and hung better anyway than anything she would buy and have “let out.”  But her dress— she had worn her favorite light autumn dress; the dress with the small, faintly-colored roses patterned across the fabric, to make herself feel more comfortable, more confident for the talk with Oscar-- had split at the seams and torn through the light fabric.  Her neck and shoulders strained against it, and there were tears where her movements had caused her muscles to bulge rapidly.  The neckline was torn into a modest but noticeable “V.”  More alarming was the reflection of the room: it was… off, somehow.  As if— if her viewpoint had changed— had she…  was she taller?!  The confusion was too much for her exhaustion, and she began to swoon.  
       Mari helped her back to the couch, whereupon Benita relievedly poured herself, looked around, and passed out.  When she came too, Oscar was gone.  The signed papers had been picked up from the scatter on the stoop and placed on the china cabinet outside the kitchen (the small simple house had no defined “dining room,” but an open area that flowed from outside the kitchen to an area that a patterned rug defined as the “living room.”).  Mariposa saw her mother stir and was upon her instantly.  “Mama!  I was starting to worry!” she said, her faltering grin making a poor showing at hiding her concern.
       “Mariposa….” Benita said, weakly, but with the warmth of a mother’s love and the tranquility of one who has awakened and seen that the nightmares were not real.   “Sweet Butterfly.  You worry too much about your Mama.  I am fine.  I am a big strong girl, and I can take care of myself, Mariposa.  Relax.  I am fine.”
       “Mama…  what happened…?”
       “I suppose I had enough, Mari.  I have had more than enough for many years.  But…  I don’t know, _Pollita_; I suppose you just… get used to it, maybe?  But to see it… to see it when it was you, I…  I was—  there was so much, so much inside me, Mari, and it just came out…  To see you in danger, it was more than I could stand.  I just— I remember what I lost when…..  I wanted to protect you, _Pollita_—“
       “No, Mama!  To you!  What has happened to you?!  You were so pale and unsteady-- when I tried to touch you, you were burning up!”  Mari studied her mother’s face, looked closely at her eyes. “_Chinita_.” She finished up and spoke.  “I don’t know what happened to you, Mama, but it has made you very tired.  I think…   I have a friend; she saw something on the news about a clinic—“
       “I will be fine, Mari.  Your fa—  _Osca-- _….  He is gone; he has signed the papers?”
       “_Si_, Mama; he has signed the papers, but I am talking about what happened to _you_, Mama!  Now come; _priso; pronto_, Mama.  We have to get you to a doctor.”
       “Mari, stop!  I have just— I have just had a very emotional day; I just need some rest—“
       “_Deja ya de gufear_, Mama!  I have already made the phone call!  The doctor is a specialist, and he will see you.  Either way, there is no charge for this—“
       “A doctor with no charge?  And you tell me _I_ am _gufear_?”
       “Please, Mama; just come in the car with me.”
       “Let me rest, Sweetie; Please.  Let me rest, and I will come with you in the morning” Benita promised groggily.  Mariposa called her boyfriend and told him she was staying with her mother that night.
 

Benita, too, was in shock.  She stood there, holding the wrist of a stranger that she had known for over twenty years.  She hadn’t thought; she wasn’t even certain that she had acted.  Mariposa… He was going to strike Mariposa.  Mariposa, who she loved dearly, perhaps even more than she loved herself.  Mari, who was, for Benita, the living embodiment of all that was righteous in the world, all that was beautiful to her.  She sat there, shaking, trying to figure out— to remember— what had happened.  Was this shock?  Was this— the shaking, the anger, the fear— was this adrenaline?  She did not know, but her mind had finished processing and was beginning to play back what had happened:
       Oscar had moved to strike Mari, and without a thought— purely by reflex and the instinct to protect Mari— Benita had reached out as Oscar’s hand flew toward their daughter and seized his wrist, stopping his fierce backhanded slap in an instant.  She pulled him around toward her, away from Mari and toward herself, jerked him off his feet and into the air and slammed him like a rag doll on his back across the table-- slammed him into it so hard that it had split the grain of the wood the length of the table and even the supporting framework underneath, dropping Oscar to the floor, where he now lay, gasping while his stunned diaphragm took stock of itself and tried to resume breathing.
       “Sign this, Papi.”  Mariposa held out a pen and the papers, which rattled slightly in her shaking hands.  Seeing her father come toward her like that—- her life, too, had changed forever.  “Sign this, Papi.  Sign this, and go to wherever it is that you go, go to whatever cheap young actress or dancer you can woo with stories of your ‘used to be;’ go find the woman who matches that sickening perfume— the woman you deserve, and do not come back, Papi.  You will not ever deserve Mama; you will not ever deserve me!  Sign this and _go_, and don’t come back, Papi.”  Benita watched, devastated as the tears rolled down her daughter’s face.  She thought about the years of abuse she had tried to hide from her.  She found herself wishing for “should have done” and “could have been.”  If only she had walked away years ago.  But Mariposa…   she needed a father, so Benita had stayed.  Mari deserved a father.  Benita was heartbroken to realize that it did not matter that she deserved one; she certainly never had one.
       Benita felt light-headed, exhausted, sluggish in body and mind.  She was flushed, and too warm.  She watched with only half her attention as Oscar struggled to his feet, took the papers from his daughter’s hand and threw them on the floor.  Benita could see the coals in his eyes as he turned to face her.  “You do not control me!  This— this _child_ “ he spit as he gestured vaguely behind himself “does not control me!  Does she speak for you?  Are you such an empty puppet now that even your daughter tells you what to do?  What manner of woman are you, Benita?!  Are you even still a woman?  Look at yourself!  You spend all your days making yourself into a man, yet you still do not have what you need!  What is strength without a spine?!  You are no more than a simpering cow!  You will _never_ presume to tell me what to—“ he drew his elbow back, hand clenching into a fist “you stupid bi-“ his attempted sucker punch never landed.  The moment he tried to swing, Benita had grabbed him by his suit coat, turned slightly, and threw him over her shoulder and toward the stairs, where he landed in a crumpled heap.  
       He rose, shaken, less bravado in his voice than before.  “You don’t scare me, you ugly cow!  You manly monster!  I am not frightened of you!  Leave!  Leave my home at once! Begone, before you grow the horns and testicles befitting a bull of your size!”
       Benita turned to him, tears on her cheeks, and making no effort to pretend that his words did not hurt.  “NO!” she screamed, with so much force that she surprised even herself.  “No!  This is _not_ your home!  It is _my_ home!  It is in _my_ name, because _I_ worked to get it!  Two jobs I worked to support you while you did _nothing_!  You _used_ me!  You took my money and my home and lived a life all your own, all to yourself, doing who knows what with who knows who; doing as you pleased, when you pleased—“  She had never allowed herself to admit this before, and while her resolve did not waiver, the tears came faster and harder.   “— when you pleased, with no regard for what I had to do to give you the clothes you wanted and the leisure you wanted, and never once did you have a hand in raising the child that —“ she stopped herself there.  That, she would not say, not aloud, to anyone, ever.  But she knew that she was right, and for the first time she had to admit that, too.  The tears came even harder as her heart broke for her daughter.  “You, Oscar D’vente Dominguez… You will get your slimy, lazy, cheating, using, hateful, dried-up shell of a make-believe man up those stairs, grab what you do not want to see burning on the front lawn, sign those papers, and leave _my_ house and _my_ daughter— _my family_— _alone_!  We do not need you, Oscar Dominguez, and we do not want you, and we will never, ever see you again!”  She started towards him, and wide-eyed, with his mouth agape, he scampered up the stairs.
 
 
 

So... no-one's touching that "Tim the Sorcerer?" Probably for the best.

I'd love to run a military-themed campaign using my Battletech minis in tandem with Hero System created characters. The Dark Champions book has good military templates, and one could do a special forces game where the players are a scout team working for a mercenary company in the Inner Sphere. If I get the Clan Invasion box, it could be either a clan game or an inner sphere game.
 
Dark Champions has tons of guns in it too, and one could just "re-skin" them using the lore and weapons manufacturers of the Battletech Universe. I'm picturing a mech pilot loadout with a PDW, camouflage cloak, survival kit and rations for a long-range scouting unit, for instance. Something like the long-range desert patrols in World War 2.

Good news!
 
Got the rabbit ear back! 
 
Bad news!
 
He yakked it up on the hood of the truck....

Okay, nothing  has stirred any interest of late, so I am encouraged to keep going.   
 
I hope no one was expecting great brilliance here-- I haven't had time for a real writing project in -- well, let's say years, and specifically since the kids became teens.
 
So I do this: I write out detailed origins or adventure or campaign summaries.  Again: it's not anything great.  It's just practice.  "Use it or lose it" and all that jazz.
 
 
Next up is Rook, an NPC HERO who I and other co-GMs have used periodically for years.  Originally the PC of a player who moved away at the turn of the century, he had never given her a real detailed origin, save that she tried doing the solo thing, got recruited by The Chessmen (an NPC government-sponsored "Hero team," at least on the public face of things, who show up to meddle and cause problems for the PCs every now and again), quit, and joined the PC team of that time (The Seven, even though none of them were the original Seven; go figure).
 
We have all dropped bread crumbs here and there as to her background when various player characters asked certain questions, so a few weeks ago I took it upon myself to go through all the Rook-related notes and put together something solid-- you know: for practice. 
 
 
 
Enjoy (or don't, as the mood or the taste strikes you).
 
 
Rook
Benita Dayanara Contreras
Latino American of Puerto Rican descent, female, age 74.
Powers first expressed at age 42 during a domestic altercation.

       Benita Contreras, born to parents who were first and second generation transplants from Puerto Rico, was always a “big-boned” girl, even in her youth.  Never truly overweight, she was broad-shouldered and heavier than other girls in her age group, and put on weight easily.  To combat possible weight problems and to improve her self-image, she exercised regularly, and took up practicing high-energy latin dances as a hobby, even while continuing her exercise routine.  As she moved to high-school, she began to dance competitively.  It was dance competitions that led her to meet her future husband, Oscar Dominguez. Benita’s early life was perfectly typical, with no clues as to who she would become.
       Her routine exercise and high-energy hobby gave her pronounced musculature, and at one point in high school, the ladies basketball coach, after Benita failed to make the team, suggested that perhaps weight training would suit her better.  On a lark, Benita, by now a tallish girl, took the inspiration and added light weight training to her routine.  Her musculature developed further, which left her with a confused self-image during her late teens— a time when people are particularly sensitive about their images and what other people think of them.  While she admired her progress on one hand, she was bothered by the weight it was putting on her, and her concern that she might be seen as “butch.”
       Benita’s friends assured her that no one felt anything about her but pride for her success and progress, and jealousy of her self-discipline.  Still, she made a conscious decision to limit her weight training lest she lose her feminine appearance.
       Two months after she graduated high school, Benita and Oscar were wed.  The marriage resulted in one daughter, named, with Oscar’s flair for the dramatic, “Mariposa Dulce (“sweet butterfly”) Dominguez.”  Benita had no second thoughts about foregoing her possible college future (she had earned a weightlifting scholarship to both Daniels University for Technological Studies and to Campaign City College) and settling in to raise her beautiful baby.
       It was at this point that trouble began to brew in the marriage.  Oscar-- charming, suave, cultured, sophisticated— all the things that Benita did not think a “big girl” would find in a man— did not like to work.  He wanted to continue on with his dancing career and his theater work.  Competitions only paid winners, and no one can win consistently; the theater paid only those who were cast (while both Benita and Oscar were born and raised in the USA, and both were raised to be bilingual, Oscar had a pronounced spanish accent that he was not only unwilling to hide when working the stage, but took a great deal of pride in cultivating), and Oscar was not cast as often as he felt he should be.  In no time at all, Benita was trying to balance two full-time jobs, a baby, and a husband with little interest in being a father or a husband.
       As Benita struggled, her stress grew, and by the fourth year of their marriage, she was taking Mariposa to the one place that she felt happy: the  Gymnasium at Campaign City College, which was open to the public for a fee considerably less than a membership at one of the chain places.  She found that exercise reduced her stress and cleared her mind, and allowed her to more ably deal with the problems in her life.  By the time Mariposa turned three, Benita had been approached about being a serious competitive body builder.  She worked hard, as she was able (she still had two jobs, and a child and husband to support) and when she could, but found herself spending more and more time at the gym and less time home.  She didn’t like to be at home anymore.
       It took her some time to admit to herself her awareness that Oscar treated her more like a servant than a wife, and that he had become less attracted to her both physically and emotionally.  Oscar, it seemed, liked proud, regal women, and not servants.  Oscar liked soft, thin women, and not the muscular machine that Benita was slowly becoming.  A year later, she found out about the affairs.  When she brought up to him how shocked and hurt she was, he simply turned it back on her, made it her fault, and painted himself the victim of a wife who did not love him enough to make herself the woman he wanted her to be.  The discussion became an argument, then a shouting match, and then he struck her.  Benita almost didnt notice the black eye, but she suffered deeply a world-shaking shock and the unnamable,  painful sense of betrayal that left her feeling as if she were in an endless freefall.  Knowing no other way to secure herself, she changed her life then.  She fell into a role of servant that kept Oscar from starting arguments and tormenting her about her “manly habits.”  She kept the baby, always, and found sitters for her when she had to work.  Oscar had the run of the house, but wanted no part of making it a home, using it more as a crashing pad between affairs.
       Benita threw herself into her weight lifting.  She had absolutely loved dancing, but could no longer bring herself to do it competitively, even if Oscar had not forbidden her from competing.  Over the next six years, she won two different title events for bodybuilding, and loved her daughter with all her heart.  She pretended to herself and to the world outside her home that everything was fine: she had a husband, a daughter, a home, and two jobs.  She pretended that she and Oscar did not fight, and that he did not hit her, though that was getting harder to do.  As Mariposa grew older, she, too, knew that there was something fundamentally wrong in her home, and Benita would take additional verbal— and sometimes physical— abuse for her attempts to shield Mariposa from her father’s activities.  “What shame is there in a man who demands better for himself?  Let the girl see that her family is entitled only to the best!”
       On her forty-second birthday, Benita’s life changed again, this time forever.  Oscar had, as had become his habit the last few years, not come home for several days.  Benita knew that she was not allowed to question him about it— she had learned that lesson the hard way, enough times that she no longer forgot it.  Still, she had made a decision.  She had had enough.  She had quit one of her jobs, finally, as Mariposa had grown and moved out, and the house was now paid for, and she was, she felt, starting to feel her age.  She had also contacted an attorney, and had an envelope containing a few papers for a simple no-fault divorce.  Most importantly, she had her daughter there for moral support.  Benita hadn’t gone to work that day.  She had spent the day talking to Mariposa, telling her things that she thought she had protected the girl from, only to find out that Mari had known, even before she was old enough to understand.  Mariposa sat at the table with her mother, waiting for Oscar.  Mariposa had come every day for four days, waiting with her mother for Oscar to return.  She stared down at the small-but-solid wooden table where she had eaten every meal until she was twenty-two, when she found her own place and moved out.  Benita, too, thought about the table— the first piece of furniture she and Oscar had bought— from a thrift store— back when times were good.  She wondered what happened, what she had done wrong— and pushed the thoughts from her mind for the ten-thousandth time.  As Mariposa had said; as the lawyer had said: she had done nothing wrong.  She had been the victim the entire time, and it was time to accept that.
       Oscar stumbled in smelling of alcohol (he had taken to drinking quite regularly the last few years, particularly as his dancing slowed and the stage parts were fewer and fewer between) and stale cigarettes (Oscar did not smoke) and perfume.  He saw his daughter and began to make light pleasantries, but Mariposa would have none of it.  “Papi,” she said, “I am here for Mama.  We need to talk, all of us.”  She paused and waited for Benita, who eventually began to speak— nervous, subservient, uncertain…   and all the while, Oscar became angry and grew angrier.
       He denied; he argued; he yelled and he blamed, and it wasn’t long before he drew back his hand and Benita instinctively recoiled.  Mariposa leapt to her feet, aghast.  For all she had suspected-- on some level been aware of-- she had never actually _seen_ it.  She railed against Oscar, shrieking her condemnation, and in absolute fury, Oscar stepped forward and drew back his hand for his own daughter, sending the back of his hand toward her mouth— 
       There was a tremendous crash— Oscar did not touch his daughter.  He lay gasping, unable to breathe, flat on the floor between two halves of the old wooden dining table, Benita’s hand clamped so tightly around his wrist that he could feel the bones within being squeezed out of position.  There was lightning in his shoulder, and he could not move his arm.  He remembered striking his daughter— a recollection that actually did surprise him, but not enough.  More accurately, he remembered _trying_ to strike her.  Then there was….  Nothing.  There was a crushing pressure on his wrist and a snatching jerk so powerful that he felt his shoulder tear.  His feet were in the air, spinning over his head, then there was a crash as something solid smashed against the back of his torso and delivered a blow to the back of his skull that robbed him of his eyesight momentarily while the blow to his back had kicked the wind from his lungs….
 
 
 
 
Yes; I'm still trying to do the "small bites" thing.
 
 

Hello again, denizens of the Fantasy Hero forums. Like many others I am sure, I have gotten quite restless during the events related to COVID and have undertaken a number of projects to assuage my boredom. This sent me down an odd path that eventually led to me finding a Creative Commons adventure that was written in Spanish and I decided to give a shot at translating it. I am not a Spanish speaker (aside from polite phrases and the ability to order basic beer and food) so I used a variety of online translations along with context from within the adventure itself to accomplish this. 
 
Anyway, I wanted to share the result with you all. It is somewhat tongue in cheek but could easily prove to be a challenge for even intermediate adventurers depending on how the monsters are written up or if the rolls go sideways. I still have a final editing pass to do, so if you find phrasing errors or the like, please let me know. I will be including some blank maps and maybe a map with hexes in a zip file with the PDF when I am done.
The Well of Brunnenburg.pdf

This is an _excellent_ question!
 
No; I mean it: this is a question that doesn't usually get addressed quite in this way.  Usually it comes up with a built-in bias: "I have this one power gamer at my table" or "I know power gaming is wrong, but" and that sort of thing.
 
As Greywind notes: it _is_ a GM's call.
 
The two biggest problems with power gaming:
 
It can really unbalance the game when one player insists on doing it, regardless of what the rest of the group is doing: he can take the same assigned points and the same earned experience and create a character capable of flat-out murdering the rest of the team, all at once.  Eventually, you end up with the Justice League: 
 
"Quickly, League!  We are needed!  Everyone quickly, charge to Location X!  Meanwhile, Superman is needed at Location Y, because he makes the rest of us completely useless when we are all together...."
 
 
For my own opinion, Power Gaming is perfectly acceptable if three conditions can be met:
 
1) Everyone at the table is into it.   Seriously: even if they aren't doing it themselves, if there are no complaints about it from the group-- no; scratch that:  if everyone explicitly agrees that they are totally cool with it happening.
 
2) The GM can handle it.  If the GM really can't devise a means to keep characters of radically different power levels happy with the game, then no: it should not be allowed to happen.  If the one or two amped-up characters are becoming a Deus Ex Machina for the group, then it probably shouldn't be allowed to happen.
 
 
That other big problem, though: that one can sneak up on a group, _especially_ if _everyone_ is doing the power gaming thing.  Just like "clean design" or "sticking with a concept" or "rationalizing via special effects," you will find that some players are far, far better at the min/maxing power gaming thing.  For what it's worth, it's usually the guys who are just really, really attentive to math and tiny details and the guys who are really good at making tight, specific concepts and fitting pretty much anything into a clean special effect.
 
It doesn't _sound_ like a problem, but there will be hard feelings eventually, particularly if [see #2]
 
3) If everyone is into what's going on, and no one is going to be torqued if they don't end up being the Biggest Abuser, and the GM can handle the fallout, then realistically?  No.  There's actually nothing wrong with it.
 
 
 

This entire problem has been compounded by published sectional armor charts that, at minimum, imply very strongly that location 13 is below the belt and above the thighs.  I speculate that what happened is that 13 'vitals' originally meant any or all vital organs, and was assigned location 13 out of game balance considerations.  But this wasn't adequately explained anywhere, leaving players with a 'vitals' location that happened to be between the gut and the thighs on the hit location chart, and the rest is history.

Well literally it just means from another place. NYC is exotic to someone from Beaumont, Texas.
 
Ah yes, the Tiffany Problem.

I'm pretty terrible at coming up with names for characters. 
 
An idle thought I've had:  in most baby name books, you can find translations of names.  My own first, middle, and last names mean "bearer of the anointed one", "little rock",  "good wine".   Each of those could be translated into some appropriately fantasy sounding pseudo-language, and then you'd have names in that language as well as words for them.  
 
As for Bob the Fighter... Bob being short for Robert, which according to Wikipedia...
 
 
You could do worse than to grab the Old High German or Norse versions and make them your own.  Hrother Eberht, warrior.  Hroth for short.  

Hi all. I’m prepping to begin a game featuring SCP critters. Has anyone done this and have any of templates I can get started with?  
 
BTW, if Brennell and any of the TTS users check this out, you’ve sold me on it and I’m trying to educate myself. I love it and hope to gain some competency in using the system. With this COVID world were in, I’m getting back into this and even after not playing in 25+ years, I love this system and what one can do with it. Keep up the work, folks!  There’s others like me coming around. 

I'm pretty terrible at coming up with names for characters. 
 
An idle thought I've had:  in most baby name books, you can find translations of names.  My own first, middle, and last names mean "bearer of the anointed one", "little rock",  "good wine".   Each of those could be translated into some appropriately fantasy sounding pseudo-language, and then you'd have names in that language as well as words for them.  
 
As for Bob the Fighter... Bob being short for Robert, which according to Wikipedia...
 
 
You could do worse than to grab the Old High German or Norse versions and make them your own.  Hrother Eberht, warrior.  Hroth for short.  

heres a rough example of a Battletech to Hero mech conversion I did
AS-7D Atlas.hdc Daishi Primary.hdc

I'm pretty terrible at coming up with names for characters. 
 
An idle thought I've had:  in most baby name books, you can find translations of names.  My own first, middle, and last names mean "bearer of the anointed one", "little rock",  "good wine".   Each of those could be translated into some appropriately fantasy sounding pseudo-language, and then you'd have names in that language as well as words for them.  
 
As for Bob the Fighter... Bob being short for Robert, which according to Wikipedia...
 
 
You could do worse than to grab the Old High German or Norse versions and make them your own.  Hrother Eberht, warrior.  Hroth for short.  

Most of the games I've played in have gone Marvel style; a few have gone DC style.  
 
I was designing a location that went DC style in a big way.  Edge City, in the fictional state of Jefferson.  It has frontage to the Mississippi River, but is about an hour away from the Pacific Ocean.  Don't think about it too hard.  No, you can't use that as quick transit from the midwest to the west coast. 
 
(It was halfway between a campaign city and a story; a 1950's hero, Captain Justice, investigating a warehouse in Edge City, got sent forward in time by his nemesis, Albert "Skullface" Schwartz.  Schwartz was in an industrial chemical accident that rendered the skin, muscle, hair, and all other flesh on his head -- and only on his head -- transparent.  Skullface is a pretty typical mad scientist type who wears a realistic looking rubber mask; when he wants to Presence Attack someone he whips the mask off in one action.  Anyway, no one believed Skullface when he told him he hadn't killed Captain Justice, just sent him forward in time, so he was being held on death row for murder.  50 years later,  Captain Justice reappears in Edge City in the same warehouse.  Cue Captain America-style "WTF" moment.  He meets up with two modern superheroes, Stephen "Red Jack" MacBride and Kelly "Blue" Summers.  Skullface having been in prison for the last 50 years, he has mellowed out a lot, and really has been worried all this time that he actually had killed Captain Justice.)

As they say:  "Location, Location, Location!"
 
Mark has a thread going that reminded me of several other threads throughout the history of my time here-- and in particular during out attempt to kit-bash a shared fictional location for a series of Champions adventures--
 
At any rate, this is an unofficial survey (no; it's not a poll: there are no boxes to tick or circles to-- >gad<  "bubble in."  Ugh.
 
There seem to be three different approaches to superhero settings, and I'd just like to get a little feedback from those folks who have favorites:
 
In the largest groups (which is, for this thread, good enough), they can be described as "Marvel," with Spiderman and his buddies battling it out in very real Manhattan in very real New York and whoever was in the West Coast Avengers doing their various fist-driven good in whatever I-feel-certain-was-a-real-location city they were having their brawls in.
 
On the other side of the coin, we have DC, with Batman in Gotham, Superman in Metropolis, The Flash in Central City, somebody in Keystone, someone else in Something-or-other Beach--   without even the slightest hint as to where these places may be, other than "USA," and generations of fans have been delighted, with this arrangement not really detracting from the enjoyment.  (I have been told that starting at some point in the 80s, a few "real cities" have slipped in here and there, but let's just keep this simple.  I only mention it because someone, rather than giving their favorite and maybe a bit of why it's their preference, will instead point out "but in recent years, a few "real cities" have slipped in here and there, and that's just not what this is about.   )
 
 
Right 'round the edge of the coin, where the shiny metal wears thin and exposes the common work-a-day metals that provide all the mass and structure, we have what, for lack of a better term, I am going to call "RPG."  No: that's not to bias anything one way or the other; I selected that name because it's where I see it the most.  In fact, it was one of the major discussions for Hepzibah, Colorado a while back.  RPG is going to be the category name for the very fictional city that must be set in a very real place.  That is, it either replaces an existing real city, or it is shoehorned into some open (or, these days, less-developed) land that has no major Metropolis, and ties directly into local rivers, mountain ranges, sewer services, and phone lines as if it had always been there.
 
 
So I'm just a bit curious:
 
What you do folks tend to prefer and, if it's not too much imposition, why do you prefer it?  You can write a dissertation; you can write a few lines.  This is not meant to be a judgmental in the least, and it is not to say or attempt to prove _anything_.  In fact:
 
First rule of this thread:
 
The guys that went before you?  The guys that went after you?   They aren't wrong!  They _can't_ be wrong, since the question is _not_ "which is better" but is in fact "which do you prefer."  I mean, I suppose they could be _lying_ about what they prefer, which would make them wrong, sort of.....    Still: it's just a fact-finding thing.  Think of it as an on-topic game, if you prefer, and spill!   Tell us what makes your game feel good to you and your players!    🌇
 
 
 
Just to break the ice, and to demonstrate that I've got nothing I'm trying to prove or snipe at, I'll go first:
 
I prefer fictional cities in vague locations.  Why?  Well, I don't know a lot about comic books, but even before I could read, i remember that Superman and Batman both lived in fictional cities.  As I got older, I started to think that all superheroes lived in fictional cities (say what you want about the Marvel Movies of today, and of the....  four?  Five, now that the movies exist?   famous Marvel characters that even non-comic readers can name (I was like thirty when I realized that Plastic Man was not in the Fantastic Four). DC comics characters are way more a part of pop culture, at least, they were certainly far more ingrained into the generation in which I grew up.  I could name twenty or more DC characters _easily_.  I didn't know Jack Spratt about any of them, but I knew who they were and what they looked like.
 
And I knew that comic book people lived in fictional cities without specifically being placed on the map.  I knew that "Central City" and "Keystone" were in the midwest somewhere, but never did now where or even how far apart the were supposed to be.
 
 
And honestly, it made sense to me-- at least, if followed in a certain groove:  the characters lived in fictitious cities, and travelled to other fictitious cities, and purchased their goods at fictitious stores and drove fictitious automobiles to fictitious locations where they would get pay phone calls from fictitious phone numbers......
 
But more than that, even:
 
Dungeons and Dragons, The Fantasy Trip, Traveller, Metamorphosis Alpha (gag)-- they all took place in fictitious locations.  All of them.  Seriously: How many people here know someone who has been to the Spinward Marches?  Yeah.  Thought so.       How about the Temple of Elemental Evil?  Really?  Two of you?  Ah; no.  I see the problem:  that wasn't a Euphemism for Congress.  I mean the actual Temple of Elemental Evil.  
 
Every city, every port, every town were all fictitious  (except for Metamorphosis Alpha, if only because it had none of those things).
 
So when Jim (my first GM) convinced us to put our little black Traveller books down and try this superhero game, we didn't even blink that the city had a fictitious name  (okay, truth time:  The city had _no_ name.  We absolutely could not come to any sort of agreement about what to name it.  Falling back to memories of different adventure scenarios from magazines and published modules, all of which mentioned various ways their offerings could be shoehorned into your campaign city, I offered the suggestion "How about Campaign City?"   After a wave of groans and laughter, everyone weighed it out seriously, and thought "It's as good as anything else and better than _everything_ Davien has suggested."    So where is it?  It's on the Great Lakes.  Which one?  Lake Campaign.  And so on, etc.)
 
The first time we had to trail a car, we were following a guy in a white work van.  "What kind of van, Jim?"
 
"uhm...  It's a Herrington.  It's a domestic brand; Herrington Coach and Truck is renowned pick-up trucks, vans, and heavy-duty cargo trucks.  They have a reasonable price point on the light trucks, so it's not uncommon to see them as fleet vehicles for companies or municipalities that need a fleet of trucks.  They are also popular work trucks for contractors.  You could sit on the sidewalk and watch ten white Herrington vans go by in less than an hour."
 
a later sesion, during a stakeout:  "You see the car pulling into the alley below and in front of you.  As you creep to the edge of the building for a better look, you can tell it's a smaller car, and when the driver's door flings open, there's no doubt it's a two-seater.  As the headlights finally shut off, you see it's a sports car, and a damned nice one."
 
"What is it?"
 
"It's a Topaz; a Spanish import engineered for just sticking to the curves.  A mid-engine set-up with the motor semi-exposed through the engine cover.  Those things do _not_ come cheap.  it's a Topaz XLR-8 (yeah: Jim thought he was funny); the top of the line for their mid-engine models:  luxurious leather and brass interior with the honest-to-God racing engine (yeah: Jim didn't know a lot about cars, either)."  He turns and looks at one of the players.  "You're actually just a little bit jealous.  You understand that there's a pretty good chance this thing would keep pace with your SuperCycle.  (his Batmobile-that's-a-motorcycle)."
 
 
Now about this time, I was reading a comic book (Jim had dozens of them just laying about all the time), and I recall the characters in their secret IDs going into a burger joint.  I can't recall the name of it, but I accepted without really appreciating that it was a fictional place, even though everyone behind the counter was dressed in what was _clearly_ reverse-colored Burger King uniforms of the day (hideous either way around, they were).
 
"Hey, Jim."
 
"Yeah?"
 
"Howcum comic books use all these fictional stores and shops and brand names?"
 
"I never thought about it.  I guess they're just hedging a bit; they don't want to take a chance on getting sued."
 
That made a lot of sense, really.  At least it did at that time.  I mean-- in 1980 I was twenty; I didn't know a lot, but I knew lawsuits were the up-and-coming career.  "So...  Howcum you do it?"
 
"Well, I don't want to get sued either!" he quipped wide-eyed and dumbfounded, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
 
 
I am not going to tell you how many years it took me to get that, so let's just say that the presentation and my lack of actual attentiveness to his answer meant that it made good sense at the time, and I wouldn't think about it until _I_ was the GM four or five years later.     😊
 
 
I still do it, though:  I mean, Campaign City is a living, breathing place: so many years and so many GMs and players have poured so much into it that I wouldn't start it over if i knew I'd live another hundred years.  And when I need a place for a reason, I will pop in a fictional one.  Need parts for a radio?  Circuit Hut has you covered.  Want a chain of mediocre burger joints?  Cheezy's is always open.  Want an upscale burger joint?  Try Albion's.  Need to repair your damaged get-away car?  Go see Toby Bender at Bender's Fender.
 
And it's not just that-- we've got streets, avenues, parks, colleges, etc-- and it all has.. well, "real places" in this fictional setting.  Not tied to any real piece of land in the US, but definitely _fixed_ in Campaign City.
 
So why do I continue to do it?  I could just as easily start a new campaign in New York or San Rafael or in any real place.  Why not?
 
Simply enough, I don't _know_ those places.  Why am I going to invest a bunch of effort into building an adventure or story into a setting that I would have to research _meticulously_ simply because the odds are pretty good than any random player is going sit down and go "well that's completely wrong."  There is also the chance that I will go to a real place, and if Los Angeles, Atlanta, Pheonix, New York City, and a few other places are any example, I _will_ be horribly, horribly disappointed.  There is no chance I am going to visit a fictional place, except at the table with my friends.
 
Most importantly of all, at least to me, is that the player characters can have _real_ (you know what I mean) impact in a fictional city.  What's the use of my pretending that the local superheroes have inspired residents to obey social distancing and wear masks to prevent the spread of Covid here in Vidalia, Ga, if all I have to do is run down to the gas station to see people with their masks around their adam's apples or over their foreheads, standing in tight huddles, sharing a cigarette, and licking each other's eyeballs?
 
What good is a story where the Heroes put out the wildfires if I can turn on the news and see that a thousand more acres have burned since lunch?  For me, that's not just counter to the feeling we're working for, but actively depressing.
 
So why isn't it tied hard and fast to a set of co-ordinates in the real world?
 
Several reasons, not the least of which is that Chicago is the most likely place, and let's face it:  Chicago, like New Jersey, isn't really fit for human habitation.  (     )
 
Jeez.  Some of you folks can't take a joke.....
 
Seriously, though:
 
It's because over the years, we have needed things-- we have needed a bit of foothills, or a river with a fork in just the right place, or a road with particular characteristics.  Or a city of a certain size or character, or an island (or six), which were dropped painlessly into the setting as it grew.  Why redraw the entire continental topography to have this work when we can just Superman it and say "it's located at the place where these things exist."  I won't bore you with a couple of hundred examples of things that were dropped in that way; just understand that they are present now, in places where they just wouldn't-- _couldn't_ be, should I pin Campaign City to a specific point on earth.
 
I also don't have to worry about co-GMs: we all know the setting equally well, and we are all comfortable tweaking it here and there as we need to, and we keep rocking on.  As I said hundreds of times before: I don't really know a lot about comic books, but what were doing fits right in with what I do know, and we're all having fun.
 
The whole "exactly how many miles to Los Angeles" or "how many miles to New York" thing?  It has _never_ come up.  Mostly, I suspect, because _no one_ has ever wanted to role play the entire trip from one pace to another, and no one has ever wanted to to a speedster run one Phase at a time the entire way.
 
 
So that's me.
 
 
Like I said: 
 
We're not going to be arguing (or, more accurately:  please accept before posting that this thread is _not_ for arguing, for proving, or for disproving that one method is better than another.  It is simply something I have become curious about, and thought that maybe some other folks might be, too.
 
 
Who's next?
 
 
 
 
 
 

Most of the games I've played in have gone Marvel style; a few have gone DC style.  
 
I was designing a location that went DC style in a big way.  Edge City, in the fictional state of Jefferson.  It has frontage to the Mississippi River, but is about an hour away from the Pacific Ocean.  Don't think about it too hard.  No, you can't use that as quick transit from the midwest to the west coast. 
 
(It was halfway between a campaign city and a story; a 1950's hero, Captain Justice, investigating a warehouse in Edge City, got sent forward in time by his nemesis, Albert "Skullface" Schwartz.  Schwartz was in an industrial chemical accident that rendered the skin, muscle, hair, and all other flesh on his head -- and only on his head -- transparent.  Skullface is a pretty typical mad scientist type who wears a realistic looking rubber mask; when he wants to Presence Attack someone he whips the mask off in one action.  Anyway, no one believed Skullface when he told him he hadn't killed Captain Justice, just sent him forward in time, so he was being held on death row for murder.  50 years later,  Captain Justice reappears in Edge City in the same warehouse.  Cue Captain America-style "WTF" moment.  He meets up with two modern superheroes, Stephen "Red Jack" MacBride and Kelly "Blue" Summers.  Skullface having been in prison for the last 50 years, he has mellowed out a lot, and really has been worried all this time that he actually had killed Captain Justice.)

I'm not sure anything does. 
 
I thought 3rd edition Star Hero was a little on the weak side, and also suffered some for being the last product out the door before 4th edition.  If I'd been in charge of Hero Games at the time, I'd probably have taken out all of the game mechanics, released it as a genre book for 4th edition, and included notes on how to use it with 3rd edition (Champions and Danger International), and also used it as a sort of "back door upgrade" for 3rd to 4th edition games.  I'd done a lot of other SF gaming with Hero at the time, using other SF RPGs converted, with a group that was extremely good at doing that sort of thing.  
 
The starship rules didn't fit with the earlier vehicle rules in Champions II, the mecha rules in Robot Warriors, or the vehicle rules in 4th edition.  They would probably work pretty well as an alternative system, if none of the other systems were desired.  The technology section was pretty good, between the equipment guide and the section on tech levels.  The advice on campaigning suffered a lot for there being so little of it (7 pages); the stuff on technology and tech levels generally likewise (5 pages); and there were also small sections on designing societies, and the use of aliens in games.  It includes a bit of sample setting, along with a sample campaign framework and adventure.  Nothing at all on space science or designing planets. 
 
All of the things it suffers for were artifacts of making it a "complete in one" third edition era standalone game, and of it coming out so closely before 4th edition.  Not the book's fault, nor the authors'.  Also, GURPS Space came out around the same time, and was probably a better Star Hero than Star Hero 3rd edition was.  

For no points, a VPP can be changed out of combat without a skill roll, or in combat requiring a skill roll at -1 per 10 Active Points.  Skills in the pool don't have to RSR to use.  If I were going to make it no skill roll out of combat, or -1 per 20 in combat, I'd probably make that a +1/4 Advantage, as the difference in RSR between -1 per 10 and -1 per 20 is +1/4.  

In practice, a 60 Active Point power would take -6 at -1/10 or -3 at -1/20.  +1 to Power Skill is 2 points, so not even taking the reduced cost of PSLs into account, the difference there is 6 points worth.  Assuming a straight up 60 point pool, with 30 points in control cost, a +1/4 Advantage is 7.5 points.  You're getting a better deal even if you buy bonuses to your Power Skill, much less PSLs.  

For no points, a VPP can be changed out of combat without a skill roll, or in combat requiring a skill roll at -1 per 10 Active Points.  Skills in the pool don't have to RSR to use.  If I were going to make it no skill roll out of combat, or -1 per 20 in combat, I'd probably make that a +1/4 Advantage, as the difference in RSR between -1 per 10 and -1 per 20 is +1/4.  

In practice, a 60 Active Point power would take -6 at -1/10 or -3 at -1/20.  +1 to Power Skill is 2 points, so not even taking the reduced cost of PSLs into account, the difference there is 6 points worth.  Assuming a straight up 60 point pool, with 30 points in control cost, a +1/4 Advantage is 7.5 points.  You're getting a better deal even if you buy bonuses to your Power Skill, much less PSLs.